Enough with the MTA’s multibillion-dollar bungling

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The MTA deserves credit for its effective operation of the world’s largest, most complex mass-transit system. The same can’t always be said for the MTA’s record in contracting for major projects.

Take East Side Access, which brings the Long Island Railroad into Grand Central Station. It’s years behind schedule and now, at about $11 billion, is projected to cost more than double its original budget of $4.3 billion.

As The Post observed in its March 17 editorial, there’s already flooding and mold at the Hudson Yards No. 7 line station, part of a $2-plus billion new subway extension that opened less than a year ago. It’s more evidence that the MTA process for bidding and building transportation projects simply isn’t working. Contributing factors include a huge bureaucracy that can’t get out of its own way and the inflexible terms of union contracts, state procurement laws and federal-funding requirements.

Similar problems plague most of the state agencies that build and maintain essential public infrastructure.

Reforming these agencies from within will be a slow and uncertain undertaking. Impatient with that process, Gov. Cuomo has come up with an alternative solution that he applied first to the new Tappan Zee Bridge and now intends to bring to other important projects, if state legislators agree.

In his Executive Budget for 2016-17, which will be negotiated with the Legislature over the next two weeks, the governor proposed a new state authority that would have broad discretion over infrastructure contracts that exceed $50 million. He plans to create a small, expertly staffed group that has the capacity to monitor, expedite and intercede in big projects that go awry. It would also be able to originate design and construction contracts for projects on behalf of agencies that aren’t able to live up to Cuomo’s expectations.

The way to get major projects built quickly, to the highest standards and at the lowest cost isn’t through large, intransigent bureaucracies. Ontario, London, Hong Kong, San Francisco and Boston have created nimble authorities that make decisions quickly, embrace innovative solutions and transfer financial and performance risk from government to the private sector.

Many of these authorities work with private-sector firms that are based in New York in order to deliver projects on time and on budget — firms whose skills go largely untapped by public agencies here at home!

Right now, the pipeline of necessary transportation improvements in New York exceeds $100 billion. The proposed new Design and Construction Corporation is intended to expedite big projects and reduce their cost, allowing the state to build additional projects within the budget and create thousands more jobs.

One would expect broad support for this proposal to accelerate modernization of New York’s aging rails, bridges and tunnels and to hold the governor accountable for the efficient investment of taxpayer dollars.

But Cuomo’s proposal has met some resistance, especially upstate, from employees of state agencies who fear loss of power and from private contractors who don’t welcome change in the status quo and fear that a new authority will simply add another layer of bureaucracy to an already-burdensome process.

Clearly, the choice of the Dormitory Authority as the place to house this new entity is troubling, since expanding its sway to infrastructure projects would make a bad situation worse.

It’s hard to blame the cynics, but New York is far behind its global counterparts when it comes to transportation development, and there’s no excuse for ignoring this opportunity to try a new approach to fixing a broken system.

New York should be the place where the world’s best compete to build our mega projects on time and on budget. This is in the interest of taxpayers and the public at large and deserves strong support from legislative leaders as they negotiate the final budget in the coming days.

Kathryn Wylde is the president and CEO of Partnership for New York City.

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